How to Communicate Value When Your Work Is Hard to Categorize

Some practitioners work in a way that does not map neatly onto standard categories. Their work is not quite coaching, not quite therapy, not quite consulting, not quite healing — it draws from multiple traditions, addresses multiple dimensions, and produces outcomes that cross category lines.

These practitioners often struggle with value communication in a specific way: they feel pressure to pick a category and fit their description into it, but every category they try leaves out something essential about what the work actually is. Or they try to explain all of the dimensions at once and produce a description that is comprehensive but confusing.

The resolution to this problem is not finding a better category. It is recognizing that category is not what the value communication needs to accomplish.

What the category problem actually is

The category problem in value communication is a category problem on the practitioner’s side, not the prospective client’s side. The practitioner feels pressure to categorize because they have been told that people need to understand what kind of work they do.

But when a prospective client is evaluating whether to invest in transformation work, they are not asking “what category does this belong to?” They are asking two questions: “Is this relevant to my situation?” and “Is what this produces what I want?”

Both of those questions are answerable without a category label. The first is answered by the before state description. The second is answered by the after state description. The category — coaching, healing, somatic work, energetic work, consulting — is metadata that may or may not be useful depending on the prospective client.

Using the before state instead of a category label: when the before state is specific enough to produce recognition, the prospective client who is in that before state knows the work is relevant to their situation — regardless of what category the work belongs to. The category label is not required to establish relevance.

What to say instead of a category label

Instead of “I am a coach” or “I am a healer” or “I do somatic work,” a practitioner with hard-to-categorize work can open with the before state: “I work with people who are dealing with [specific pattern] — specifically [the more precise manifestation of that pattern].”

This is more informative than a category label. It tells the listener immediately whether the work is relevant to their situation. And it requires no shared understanding of what “coaching” or “somatic work” or “energy healing” involves.

From the before state, the value description can move to the after state — what changes, specifically, for people who work through this pattern — and the timeframe. By the time the practitioner has described the before state, the after state, and the timeframe, the prospective client has a clear picture of what the work is, even if they cannot assign it to a familiar category.

The description format for uncategorizable work: the before state, after state, timeframe format was designed precisely for transformation work that is difficult to describe through traditional category labels. It sidesteps the category question entirely and focuses on what the prospective client actually needs to know.

When category becomes useful

Category is useful as secondary information — after the before state and after state have been described. Once the prospective client understands what the work is in terms of who it is for and what it produces, they may want to understand the mechanisms or modalities involved. At that point, the practitioner can describe the dimensions of the work without having to lead with any single category.

“The work combines [modality A] and [modality B] — I draw on both because [specific reason each is relevant to the before state pattern I work with]. It doesn’t map exactly onto what most people think of as coaching or as [other modality], but that’s intentional — the specific pattern I work with requires both.”

This introduces the category information in a context where it is meaningful — after the listener already understands what the work is for.

Niche clarity for practitioners with unusual work: practitioners with multi-modal or unusual work often find that niche clarity is especially important for them. When the niche — the specific before state and population — is clear, the unusual nature of the work becomes a feature rather than an obstacle: this specific approach is for this specific pattern, and the combination of modalities is what makes it effective for that pattern.

The confusion that category-first communication produces

When a practitioner with multi-modal work leads with a category label, they often encounter a common problem: the prospective client’s understanding of that category shapes their expectations in ways that do not match the work. A prospective client who hears “coach” brings their understanding of what coaching involves. If the work is significantly different from that understanding, the practitioner spends the rest of the conversation correcting the category misunderstanding rather than communicating the actual value.

Leading with the before state and after state bypasses this problem. The prospective client’s understanding of what the work involves comes from the description of the work, not from a prior mental model of the category.

Escaping category language: the generic language problem in practitioner value communication often originates in category-first thinking. The practitioner who describes their work through a category label defaults to the language of the category rather than the language of their specific work.

Avoiding category comparisons: practitioners with unusual work are sometimes tempted to explain what their work is not — “it’s not quite coaching, it’s not quite therapy…” — which positions the work through negation rather than through its own description. The before state and after state format is positive: it describes what the work is and what it produces.

The Abundance GPS Skool community helps practitioners with unusual, multi-modal, or hard-to-categorize work develop clear, honest value language that works. Join us here.